Okay, bare with me. Read this… Concrete Wildeness

As humans, we think everything is about us. I hope one of these days that thinking backfires on us. I think it already has. Take Hurricane Katrina and the New Orleans debacle. Maybe we shouldn’t build in low lying, flood prone areas. I just don’t understand why we can’t figure that one out. Also, with colder weather here, why do we spread salt and brine all over the roads because a few over-passes freeze up and cause some goof ball to bust his bumper? Its a waste of tax payer money and can’t be good for the environment. I wonder if those that make the decisions to spread salt over the roads would like it if I dumped pounds of salt in their drinking water and inside their house? Probably not. I’d say that fish, birds, etc. don’t either. People must take responsibility for themselves. If it is icy and you decide to travel roads, then the onus must be yours to travel safely. If you can’t, then you should not be out.

The Ocoee Wilderness area of the Cherokee National Forest is a nice little piece of land that doesn’t need a 4 lane splitting it down the middle. Just like Townsend didn’t. Lets hope this doesn’t go through.

Well, Jasper is already the man about town. His is taking calls from all the babes he met at the hospital and of course he loves PBR. He hasn’t built up a good tolerance yet, so he passes out after one sip. And of course he is a cool as a cucumber.

What’s Up?

Meghann brought our baby boy into the world Monday morning at 11:10am. He was 8lbs – 3oz and 20.5″ long. I am already thinking of how I can get him on a bike. Meghann has been great. Its one thing when I hold him. I am trying to ease the burden off her. But its something completely different to see Megahnn hold him. They have got some connection that I just can’t explain. Its really cool.

I took my busted night light battery apart and found that the positive and negative leads were broken and shorted. I cut the wire and re soldered them together. Recharged it last night and all is good. I also took an older 15W halogen Ni-Cad battery pack to Batteries Plus. They are going to rebuild it for $30 and rebuild it with higher capacity batteries. I should be able to run both 15W lights and be all good for DH night riding. Its good to fight and win the urge to spend $400+ on a new light system. On a side note: NiteRider wanted $150 for a new battery pack. I need to save the cash for: a clutch for the truck, generator for the toy hauler, brake job for the truck, and of course some new bike parts.

Well its been a long time since I posted. Its not that I don’t have anything to say, I just got lazy.

Christmas came and went. It was one of the better, present wise, Christmas in recent memory. I got a new portable XM Radio for the truck, home and on the go. Its really cool. You can record live XM music and store it on the device to listen to later. I also got a 22″ wide screen monitor for my computer. I got spoiled at work with larger monitors so I had to have one. I also got a new bag to keep all my bike stuff in for local riding. It seems that as I get older I get more scatter brained. It seems I spend too much time wondering around trying to round up my stuff for riding. My helmet is in the garage, my shoes are on the porch, my shorts are in the bedroom, my gloves are in the laundry room. Then of course I need to find my mp3 player, my tools, and camelbak. Meghann also got me a new softshell jacket. I love to have one jacket that I can always rely on, but now that I work out of the house I need something to wear to the office that isn’t covered in dirt and smells. I rotated my trusty Paty Coreskin jacket to my uptown jacket and my new Carhart softshell will be my knock around jacket. But best of all I got a Stihl chainsaw. I have borrowed my dad’s chainsaw for years and it was high time I got one of my own. I got the smallest saw Stihl offers, so its super easy to pack into Windrock for trail work and its plenty big for house work.

Riding has been sporadic, but we have been able to ride at Windrock all year and that has been nice. I like to ride my bikes, thats a given. But I like to ride my DH bike most of all. Just the way the bike floats under me and over the rough terrain is better than anything else. We have been working hard on rerouting some of the Windmill trail to make it more intermediate friendly, as well as lengthen it. I think we have succeeded. The trail is also full of jumps, which is new for Windrock.

While it was in the teens last week, this week has been in the upper 60s. I got out of work early yesterday and headed over to IC King for a quick ride. What a good ride. T-shirts and shorts on Jan. 7th. The ground was muddy in some sections and pretty tacky in others. I just pedaled along and pinned what I could. I got some good drifts around corners and eyed up a couple good places for doubles along the trail. I did some XC on Saturday at Norris on my DJ bike. I jacked the seat up and put on clips. Wow, that sucked. That bike is fun for playing around, but anything more than a couple of miles it is just not fun.

Meghann will tell you that I am more than a little neurotic about over planning and thinking too much on certain things. Sitting idle and off the bike for a couple of weeks has caused me to want all new stuff. I feel I need a new trail bike, but which bike is best suited for all my needs. I bet there isn’t such a thing. For the most part, my XC riding consists of pinning Haw or Concord with my seat a little too low for about an hour or so. Every once and awhile I get a bur in my ass and I like to pedal up Lone or Windrock for a good XC downhill. Then of course I need a mini-DH bike for the Carter’s Lake races and Clemson. A Morewood Ndzia would be awesome for Haw and Concord, but would suck at Carter’s, Lone, and Windrock. A Morewood Mbuzi would be awesome for Windrock, Lone, and Carter’s, but would be over kill for Haw and Concord. It seem the Morewood Shova ST would be the best choice, but I might kill one at Carter’s. I like my current, older model Shova, but the BB is a little too high. However, I got to ride my Shova yesterday and of course I fell back in love with it. So maybe I just need to ride more instead of wanting more.

I have also come to a realization. Duck hunting in East Tennessee is not a useful endeavor. I have never put in so much effort to a activity and made so little progress. If it wasn’t for watching my lab, Isabella, retrieving ducks I’d give it up completely. I do enjoy it, but it seems that its becoming to much like my least favorite hunting (deer hunting). I thought that I need to get back to fly fishing. I was good at it and I really enjoyed it. I may go goose hunting once or twice before the season is up, but I’m not going to think about ducks until next year.